Beauty
by marzoog
Summary: There is beauty in all kinds of love, dear Pat. Unrequited, platonic, unconditional, or otherwise. That’s the thing you learn as you grow older. Someday, my dear dear boy, you will find that out.


**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. This is fanfiction. That is all you must know. **

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'__

**_-John Keats_**

_"If that's what love is," she says, "then I don't need it." _

_"You will sometime, Di Blythe," he informs her, "and when you do you I'm not going to be here." _

_"You will Patrick Andrews, and you know it." _

_"Di," this time more mellow, "I can't be here forever, and you know it. We're only sixteen Di."_

_"We have all the time in the world, Pat. And what are you going to do but follow me around, eh?" _

_"Di," gently, "I can't follow you always. Not when I know how you feel." _

_"Pat," softly, "We have time. Let's just keep going on forever as we are." Green met brown. _

_"No, Di. You can try, but it won't work. I have to face my own life." _

Oh, how that conversation would haunt her!

**O&O&O&**

As far back as she could remember Patrick Andrews had been in love with her. From when they first met at age eight, to her first year of teenager hood. At first they had been chums, all four of them. Patrick (then he was still P.G.), Nan, Jill, and Di.

Time trickled on, and they had grown apart. The Andrews were rich, and spent much of their time abroad. But one couldn't exactly help liking them, Di felt. You had to enjoy their happiness.

When she went to Queens, the first person she saw in the front row was Patrick Andrews (no more P.G or Pig). His red hair had grown, and his eyes had mellowed, but he was still the same chum she had had.

**O&O&O&**

"Well, if it isn't Mistress Diana Blythe."

"Well, if it isn't Mr. Pig Andrews."

"It's actually Patrick. Pig is my younger self, you know."

"No, I didn't know. Thank you for informing me."

"My pleasure. Any time, any place, always at your service, Madame Red."

"I believe you are rather forward, Mr. Andrews."

"I believe I am, Miss Blythe. I believe I am."

**O&O&O&**

They called her the redheaded in half-complimenting tones. As if to say "Well, I suppose red is alright, even if it's not as nice as brown, and you never know what women can do these days, with or without red hair."

Di sometimes wonders what it must be like to be beautiful. To not have sallow skin, hollow eyes, and flesh colored lips. To not look in the mirror and wonder at your ratio of beauty to dancing princesses with curves and coloring like apple blossoms.

She is not bitter, but sometimes she thinks being bitter might ease her nerves.

**O&O&O&**

Sometimes, he thinks, aestheticism is overrated. If beauty exists sorely for beauty, than what could exist without it? He has seen the Doma and Big Ben and l'Ile de la Cite, but he wonders if everything has to be beautiful.

He thinks of the shiny color of flies' backs, and the shape of the plaster cracks in walls, and knows that everything has a little beauty in it.

**O&O&O&**

Lying, puffy faced down, on her bed, she hears a knock.

"Nan, if you even think of coming in here I'll-"

The door opens.

"My name's not Nan."

She looks at him for a minute.

"It certainly is not," she acquiesces faintly.

"May I sit down, Madame Red?" he points to the stocky wood chair.

"I guess."

Silence is the 7:26 bell, ringing through the room.

"What are you doing here?"

"I came when I heard about Alexander Gardiner. I thought you might need some morale support or something."

"Oh, no. I'm fine. I knew he was a cad, I just didn't fully realize that implication."

"Well, we all have our moments of misguided trust. But don't let that stop you from trusting in the future, Di."

"Patrick, quit trying to sound like my mother."

"Sorry. I just figured you might be wanting to talk to your mother now, more than anybody, especially me."

"Thanks, Pat. That's sweet of you." She pats his hand.

He looks at the cracks in between the floorboards.

"Di, I was never a very good friend to you, was I? I mean, after Mum married Anthony."

"What are you talking about, Pat?"

"Well, I didn't come around as much as we used to, and then I went off to boarding school while Jill stayed, and I never wrote, and then I started spending vacations in Europe instead of at the Glen, and…"

Di cut him off.

"Pat, you were just young. And I didn't expect you to keep in touch with me-US-" a blush comes into her cheeks.

"But Jill kept in touch with you, and I-"

"Pat, there is a reason for that. Jill is a writer. And you, my dear chap, are anything but."

"That's no kind of excuse for it, though. I should have been better with your and Nan's friendship."

"Friendship isn't like that, Pat. It stays whether you write or not. It's not like a bird you take care of, and have to feed all the time. It's a tree that has its roots in deep, and can always grow back. So stop looking like a sad puppy dog."

"Alright, Countess of Crimson," he says, and smiles.

**O&O&O&**

If their friendship had been a cut down tree, it has started to grow back at a marvelous rate. It would have leaves, possibly blooms. Their friendship has grown to its fullest. Di sometimes wonders if friendship is underrated in her overly romantic soul.

Nan has almost stopped spending time with the boys who used to call, and instead bickers with Jerry Meredith. Di knows that she doesn't want to give up male friendship, but it might be nice to have someone to bicker with as well, she thinks.

Common conversation has derogatory cacophonic note to it, the beauty of Blue Grass when she prefers the gentle cadences of Mozart. 'Hello"s and talk about the weather seems to come down in cacophony on her ears.

So, she wants Mozart conversation, but doesn't know where to get it.

**O&O&O&**

The realization that he loves her takes like an arrow to a bull's eye. It hits the all the answers to the questions in his brain. It is something he might even call an epiphany. Love is not the value of X, he realizes, but the heart's blood beating through him.

It is not the answer, but the thing that compels us to find our answer.

He wants to know what the bouncy crimson mesh of her hair feels like streaming in sunlight over his fingers. He wants to know the shape of her eye sockets at any angle. If her laugh as it bubbles out from her head on his neck tickles.

There is so much he wants to know, this love springing forth questions now instead of answers.

**O&O&O&**

She becomes scared by the look in his eyes. The look that he would like to know everything from her clicking boots to her deepest most thought to the wisps of her hair floating up highest in the air off her head.

Being known, knowing someone, is something that seems to be much more bogged down than it is worth.

**O&O&O&**

"Pat, why do you look at me like that?"

"Like how, Mistress Titian?"

"Like you are trying to read something set in tiny print about me."

"Such as?"

"I don't know, stuff that no one cares about. It's nothing, I suppose, but I don't like it when you do that."

"Look at you that way?"

"Yes."

"Di, I can't help the way I look at you."

"Yes, you can! Pat, why do you always have to test the boundaries of our friendship? Can we just leave it as is?"

"No, Madame Red," and he winks at a well remembered joke.

"Why not?"

"Because I love you."

"WHAT?"

"Calm down, don't make a scene. I love you, alright? There's nothing I've ever been able to do about it. It's the way it is, Madame Red."

"Why did you never tell me?"

"Tell you! Why haven't I told her, she asks!" his head tilted back in heavy, albeit bitter, laughter, "Di, I've never told you because I knew it would make you like this."

"What do you mean by 'this'?"

"Uncomfortable. And I didn't want you to be anything but comfortable around me."

After a pause: "Pat, you know we're only sixteen."

"And what's that got to do with anything, Madame Red?"

"We're young. And someday you'll find a girl much prettier and much much smarter, and much richer who will make you much happier than I could even think of."

"But it won't be you, and that's what I want."

"Listen to us. Sixteen and talking of marriage! How silly are we?"

"Very silly, Madame Red," he says, and she does not catch the bitterness in his voice.

**O&O&O&**

The fall tinted world looks friendless as she walks down the road to the schoolhouse. The path well beaten down before her, so set. She wishes she could be in Rainbow Valley now, away from this new unseen foe of fear.

Only three years ago, she had walked down this path as a student. But then, she had had Nan and Shirley and Rilla walking with her and they had stopped at the Glen. Now Shirley was at Queens himself, and Rilla going back to the Glen school, so she continued her trek to the Upper Glen school by herself.

She tries not to think of him, and instead thinks of the role reversal of being in front of a class rather than in one.

**O&O&O&**

Jill says he's moping, but Patrick Garret Andrews does not mope. He sulks.

Jill perceives a new source of "sulkiness" and continues to hound him like a bear as to what happened this time. He doesn't want to tell her that this is a childhood relapse over Diana Blythe. So, instead, he romps around Orchard Knob, the gardens and the views, with his canvas and brush, and thinks that beauty is worth more than the pain of unrequited love.

Love, he says in his sulkiest of sulky moods, doesn't have any beauty.

**O&O&O&**

"PG, dear, are you alright?"

He twitles his head to see his mother.

"Of course, Mums. Why wouldn't I be?"

"It's just that, ever since you got back form Queens, you've been so quiet and contemplative."

"Oh?"

"Dear, you know you have been. And I want to know what it is. I'm your mother, after all. Is it a girl?"

He nods briefly.

"A very special girl?"

"Very special," he mummers faintly.

"Aha. So that's it. My little Pat has fallen in love. But why so glum?"

"She doesn't love me back at all. And, Mums, I'm sure she's the only girl in the world who could make me feel like you feel about Anthony. And I couldn't ever life without that kind of love. Mums, I know you loved Dad in your own way…but I could never life with a platonically kind of love. What's the beauty in it?"

"You're young to be thinking of marriage, my dear boy. But, there is beauty in all kinds of love, dear Pat. Unrequited, platonic, unconditional, or otherwise. That's the thing you learn as you grow older. Someday, my dear dear boy, you will find that out."

**O&O&O&**

"Nan?"

"Yes, Di dear?"

"What's it like?"

"What's what like?"

"What's it like to be in love like you are with Jerry?"

"You'll find out soon enough, dear."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You know Patrick Andrews?"

"Of course."

"You know he's in love with you then?"

Di shivers, though the night is not cold.

"Yes."

"Then you should know how it feels like to be in love."

_'But I don't,_' she thinks to herself, '_because I don't think I can be in love with him.'_

**O&O&O& **

A bullet flies. A life flees. The world spins on the same axis, but the axis of man tilts.

Trenches are built out of heart veins, out of gentlemen's agreements. The sky should be different, the world entrenched instead of circling, but somehow it has not. Somehow he knows that the sky will be the only thing that won't change.

_The longed-for ships  
Come empty home or founder on the deep,  
And eyes first lose their tears and then their sleep._

**O&O&O&**

Sometimes in her dreams he smiles and sometimes he laughs. The laugh always seems always to snub her, to rebuke her for thinking she has a right to dream about him. The laugh is the personified insecurities in her heart.

The smile is what she likes best, because it includes her. Laughter is exclusive, the edges of mouths giving a barrier to people which cannot be crossed. On the nights he smiles she feels like one person, and on the nights he laughs she feels like two.

She wakes up, looks at the ceiling of her Kingsport ward, takes out an old and worn letter, and thinks of how he has now even invaded her dreams.

**O&O&O&**

_Madame Red,_

_Well, I'm off. Last week was my eighteenth birthday (thank you for the embroidered handkerchief), so I've signed up, darling. I've gone to see the sites of __Europe__ drenched in mud. Perhaps, if this war is over as soon as the populace seems to think it will be, I will be able to stay and see the beauty in __Europe__. And perhaps I shall ask you to join me, and we will see that beauty together. _

_I'm leaving in a week for training, and if I complete it I'll be going to __England__ in two months. I've decided to become an aeorplane pilot, and I might pass the test if I can stop staring at the pale blue of the sky that fascinates me so. Wish me luck, anyway, because I believe I am going to need it badly. _

_My mother once told me something, Di, that has stuck to me. She once said that all forms of love are beautiful, and so I am calm now in the knowledge that whether you love me as a friend or as a lover, there is still beauty in it. I've always been such a lover of beauty, a captor of light, that I think I shall try and find something beautiful that you've given me in my heart to keep me going on. _

_So, don't worry about me, darling. I'm not in pain over you, but please remember I love you in all forms possible, and I'll be content with whatever love you give me because it's you giving it. Dry your tears, Signorina Scarlet. (I've got so many blasted nicknames involving you and the colour red that I'm sure they could take up their own page in the Times.) _

_Laugh if you want to do emotional outletting. Because laughing is how I'll always remember you, and how I'll hope to find you when I come back. (And, Di Blythe, you better give me a rather large kiss for all my efforts to aid this blasted country) _

_Just know that when I once told you I couldn't be with you forever, I didn't mean it in this way. And know this always Di: love may be beautiful, but friendship is beautiful too, and what memories and friendship you have given me are some of the most beautiful in my life. _

_Please write to me. It would help to hear from you, and to try to imagine your voice again. _

_As always, your dear friend, _

_Patrick "Pig" Andrews_

**O&O&O&**

Once upon a time she used to put a flower in her coat pocket, but the beauty looks so out of place here that she has stopped doing it. Now and then she will give one to a patient, but then the Head Nurse frowns and mentions something about the importance of not showing favoritism.

There is so little beauty in daily life here. She wakes up in a cold unfriendly boarding house, walks down cold, smoky, dark brown edged streets that make her long for fields of green and Rainbow Valley, goes down shabby halls to cots laid with dead and dying men. Sometimes she runs madcaply around the old town, just to feel what it's like to breathe again.

Life goes round and round these barriers of brown and sallow walls so there's no breaks, no faults in the perfect circle, no end in the suffering, no Happily Ever After.

**O&O&O&**

He has heard the expression light at the end of a tunnel, and wonders if that's all these years are about. If finding the light and rekindling the beauty of a former time will all the suffering worth it.

He thinks of her often, lying in the cold tube of his cot, and wonders where she is at **that** exact moment, and then **this** exact moment, and the next moment, and the next. He wonders how her eyes look, whether they are pistachio or forest green in her expression.

He feels so devoid of beauty that even in his dreams he sees bland fields and shells exploding and listens to the cries of wounded men.

**O&O&O&**

"He's a badly wounded cuss, alright, Doc."

"What happened to him?"

"He was flying over German trenches, and got shot in the wing. He managed to land, but the plane titled and he got glass and some exploding shrapnel. He's pretty bad, alright."

"Do you know who he is or where he's from?"

"For the life of me, I can't remember his name. He's from somewhere around the Maritimes, I think I heard him say, but I can't remember his name. He spent most of his time writing letters to his girl, anyway."

"Could you get those letters so we could see his name?"

"No, I can't. I don't know where he put them. And then took all his stuff, and gave his bunk to a new boy when they heard he got wounded."

"Very well. Well, there's no choice but to wait until he wakes up."

"Do you think he's gonna, Doc?"

"I don't know, and I think it might take a long time. Besides external wounds, he also got a pretty bad concussion. He might even be in a coma, for all we know."

"Then do you think the best plan is just to send him back?"

"We could try. I assume there will be a boat going back soon. But the only certainty there is, is that this brave young man isn't going to be able to do any more fighting."

**O&O&O&**

After trying to learn everyone's name for months, Di gave up after figuring out that it was near impossible. Di was always a woman of sense, and therefore did not cry at night like Nan when a patient died.

She feels like leaping out of her own skin. She wants to be dancing on heather clouded moors, not walking down cobblestone streets. His letters have stopped, and for a while she worried, but then she just knew that Patrick Andrews wasn't gone. Because if he was gone so would be beauty.

At nights she lies and thinks of him and knows she is in love with him, has been since she was a little girl and he wore knickerbockers and they would play pretend together by the shore. Her mental phonograph plays his voice in her head and she wishes she could change her answers to his questions.

And, still, she doesn't cry. She is Diana Blythe, and she doesn't cry.

**O&O&O&**

**The clocks tick ****12:06**

Footsteps are everywhere. They paint-splatter on the floors. He hears: _dunt__, dunt, dun, dun, dun, dun, dunt, dunt as _they speed up and slow down. His world is black. He feels the lightness and the weight of black pressing in.

**The clocks tick ****12:07**

Screams are everywhere. They break into water crystals on the wall. He hears: ah, ahh, ahhh, noooo, nooo, noo, no as they reach the arch of pain. His plane of thought is constricted to the chalky edged sounds. He feels the phantom pain of sympathy course through his head and course out.

**The clocks tick ****12:08**

"This one must be new."

_Who are they talking about?_ he wonders. A soft voice. He wants to open his eyes and see its owner, but can't. He wants to assure her, but can't.

"He came in last night. Poor fellow. So weak he can't open his eyes. I doubt he even remembers anything of his past. He's practically in a coma. "

**The clocks tick ****12:09**

_What is coma?_ This is a different voice. _Voices, voices, floating, floating, floating…._

"What happened to him?"

He wants to know who "him" is and what happened and hear the soft voice again, but the blackness wants to eat, and he is drowned and-

_bye_

**The clocks tick ****12:10**

**O&O&O&**

_"What makes the leaves green?" _

_Diana turns around and clamps her hands to her mouth in fright before answering. _

_"Oh, Pig. You scared me." _

_"Well, do you know?"_

_"Know what?"_

_"Why leaves are green?"___

_"Mother told me a story about it once." _

_"Let me hear it." _

_"Mother says that one day some elf children were playing in a field, and a little elf boy wanted to play, but the other elf children didn't like the elf boy, and wouldn't let him play. That night the elf boy wished on a star to be a part of the world and be loved. A good fairy heard his wish and thought of ways to grant it. She went to the elf boy, and told him that she would grant his wish by killing him and reincarnating him to become something beautiful. The elf boy, so sad and wistful, agreed." She pauses. " That part always makes me cry." _

_Tears trek her checks. _

_"Well, what happens in the story?" Pig demands after several minutes. _

_"The boy became part of the earth, and now all the plants have leaves the colour of his skin. The little elf boy now helped other little lonely become peaceful. He at last ceased to feel lonely."_

_They sit in hallowed silence for several minutes. _

_"That's a beautiful story" says Pat softly. _

_"It is beautiful, but so sad. It makes me wish people didn't have to be lonely, and that everyone was as happy as I am." _

_Pat places his hand over hers, and together they watch the sunset. _

**O&O&O&**

May, 1919

Kingsport General Hospital

Patient: 24A3

Name: Unknown

First Date of Residency: April 17th, 1919

Residence: Unknown

Dog Tag: Not found

Height: Unattained

Hair Color: Red

Eye Color: Hazel

Comments: Coma-like state until more recently showing signs of conciousness. Constant eyelid flutter. Often murmurs the words "elf", "boy", and "die" in that order. Reasons unknown.

**O&O&O&**

She would watch him.

She had to be there when his eyes opened, it didn't matter that there was a wedding for Rilla to help plan. All that mattered was that it was him, with his fiery hair and warm hands and muddy eyes.

With his closed eyes, he could be someone else, someone who looked achingly like Pat, but only Pat could have those beautifully muddled eyes that looked like everything had been crammed in them.

The Head Nurse threatened her for showing so much attention to this patient. Di calmly explained that this might be the man she loved, and there were no more threats. The Head Nurse brought her a cup of green tea from time to time.

"You'll wake up," she whispers to his ear, "You'll wake up and it will be happily ever after because I'm going to fall into your arms and never let you go. Just please wake up soon."

**O&O&O&**

**The clocks tick ****11:58**

_elfboy-singanddance__crimsoncoil__=madamered. reallyprettyincandllightand willdriveyounutsiwiththelookinhereyes. elfgirlindress-----ladedadedum.di?whatisgreen? samethingaslife,iguess. _

Wake up, Pat. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

_isthattheSoftVoice__? wanttohearSoftVoiceagain. _

**The clocks tick ****11:59**

Open your eyes, Pat.

_whoispat__? whatiseye? open? _

Come back to me, Pat.

wanttogo. prettySoftVoice. gogogogogogogogogo.

Oh, please. Please, dear God, please. Please.

arepleasesprayers? prayersareanswered,SoftVoice(elfgirl).

_Light.___

**  
The clocks tick ****midnight**** and all's well. **

**O&O&O&**

The sounds of happiness:

-a groan

-a cry

-a "_It is you_!"

-a "_I'm here now, Di_."

-a rustling of sheets

-a joyful thud of body to body in hugging

-a silence after all the noises of pain

**O&O&O&**

Ding, dong, and the midnight bells gave her a happy ending instead of Cinderella.

Some say that happy endings are trapping, but then they don't know the beauty of happiness. As she sits with his head in her lap in Rainbow Valley, she knows that although happiness is unsteady and fleeting that is where its true beauty lies.

The air has gotten its clean smell back again, the elf-boy green no longer tainted with sadness.

"Di?"

"Yes, Pat?"

"Do you love me?"

"That's a silly question to ask when you already know the answer."

She laughs softly into his face.

"But I don't know the answer."

"Patrick Andrews, you are my predestination. You are my soul mate. You have been with me always for a reason and that is that I love you much beyond reason and Blythe sense. I thought you had been lost, but you came back. You have always come back, and I know now that you always will. What is we have must be so beautiful that some heavenly power knows that it cannot be destroyed."

"You will marry me then?"

"Another silly question!" a fresh skidding laugh, "You are full of them this morning."

Seeing his face contaminated with a touch of affront, she adds softly, laughingly, and oh so sweetly into his upturned face:

"Of course I will."

**O&O&O&**

She still sneezes and she still gets itches behind her knees and she still gets frazzled to the ends of her hair, even though she is with her fairytale prince. She knows that "Happily Ever After" implies constant beauty and constant perfection of felicity. She knows when he smiles or laughs or kisses her with rough skinned lips that her life is more beautiful with him and the topsy-turvy course of real love.

And she knows that the beauty of that love is greater than any fairytale or make believe.

**Fin. **

**Special thanks to**_: Margaret, as always, for being my mentor and fanfiction encourager. Gem, for reminding me that Di was in __Kingsport__. Miri, who woke me up to my tense problems (I hope my uses of tenses are better in this fic!) and who always leaves lovely reviews that are wonderfully honest. Ruby, who writes awesome fics and always gives me reviews and encouragement. _

Erg.

Alright, some of you I know are confused even more than usual (I have a talent for confusing people). The confusion is because you have not read the short story by LMM in the book The Road to Yesterday called "The Twins Pretend".

"The Twins Pretend" is probably my favorite story of that book, and the story is about a set of twins named Jill and P.G. (whom I have named Patrick Garret in this fic) who are extremely lucky when the owner of their dream house just happens to meet them and let them fix it up the way they've always imagined.

Nan and Di play a large part in the story, and it was suggested that P.G. is sweet on one of them. Since Nan has Jerry, and Di no romantic interest in RoI, I decided to make him go after Di. Hence this fic. :)

Personality wise P.G. is lazy but goodhearted. So I made him not so charming as down-to-earth, and slightly more selfish than most. But, in the moment of crisis, he shines.

I'm sorry if you're terribly confused.

These one-shots of mine keep getting longer and longer! Over 4,000 words and 15 pages. That is more than double my longest one-shot. I'm sorry guys for putting you through this. I tried and tried to cut things, and to make Pat and Diana just fall into each others' arms. But they wouldn't shut up! And there had been so much MORE I had wanted to say! (Like Di's insecurities about her looks, and Pat being an artist and all)

Not only is this my longest one-shot, but also my longest author's notes. I'll shut up now. Please give me some helpful feedback, and make sure to have a great day! J


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